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| Some people call it...Tim? |
Designing the city will be kinda hard. I'd love to use the Maelstrom stuff and convert it (somehow) into the city. Easier said than done. That, and while the Maelstrom works well for the more fantastic aspects of Star Wars and D&D, I am going for something a bit more gritty for Shadow City.
I may not even bother with much of a map. The basic idea is fundamental. It's a huge, sprawling, oppressive, city. There are massive buildings everywhere. There are poor everywhere. The apathy is almost tangible. Who needs a map? its there somewhere you want to go? Fine, get on your bike/car/mecha and go there. Take the I-42 unless you want to get stuck in traffic.
I think I want to identify some specific areas for color and direction, but otherwise the city needs to grow and otherwise remain somewhat mysterious. Almost as if it were alive and growing. That's what cities seem to do sometimes. That neat gaming store you loved to hang out in? Yeah, it closed, it's a flower shop now. That Steak & Shake you went to not 3 days ago, yeah, it's being remodeled into chicken fingers place or something.
Plus, I don't think there will be suburbs. Oh they may exist...as some sort of mythological place that people commute to. Not a place that Shadowrunners go. Mostly the players will deal with the massive and seemingly endless lines of great and oppressive buildings.
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| And cool planes. |
Sounds awesome. I've always loved city RPGs.
ReplyDeleteNot all of shadowrun was based out of Seattle, many of the books were located elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteThe trick of the anonymous City is that it still needs to feel like home to the characters. I think a rough map would be good, not with enough detail to get caught up in any sort of navigation. But something more abstract that identifies the relationship between neighborhoods, specific places of interest, and major traffic routes.
Yeah, I know about all the other cities in the splat books. But really, Shadowrun as a thing has always been tied to Seattle.
ReplyDeletewhat you are advocating is basically what Zak did with his method. It's goofy and hard to really deal with for more concrete thinkers like me, but after several reads, I think I finally get it. I'm actually working on a follow up to this post that does some it.
For example: Taking Oklahoma City between my office and home; there are the following neighborhoods
ReplyDeleteDowntown-Midtown-Uptown-Asian District-Paseo-Western-Belle Isle. In a game setting I don't need to know streets, or how many blocks are in each, but knowing the relationship between them can be useful, such as how those are all neighbors in a north south line, you can't get to one with out going through another. Say for example the Asian District has some sort of Triad style gang activity. If I want to cut from Belle Isle to Uptown, I know that I will either be going through that gang's territory or specifically going around them.
Also little bits of knowledge like that can really make the amorphous city feel like your character really lives there, knowing what to expect in the different neighborhoods gives them personality.
To be honest my new favorite city map for gaming, was a box insert that came with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It's a big fold out poster, but it had several awesome things going for it.
Cities were fictional so apart from playing the video game, you didn't have people that visited there.
It included 3 major cities of different styles (roughly LA, SF and Vegas analogues)
The roads were useful but largely inconsequential, so you didn't get hung up on trying to navigate.
Visual Aids = Good
I seriously considered using OKC and the city maps from GTA. Eventually I decided against it for various reasons. In the case of the former, it was too familiar and making OKC oppressive is a stretch. In the case of the later, it was too concrete. It lacked some of the amorphous nature I wanted.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I didn't want a map the players could reference from the beginning. I wanted the experience to be an exploration. The map and city would, eventually, be familiar and fleshed out but only at the end of the campaign. Even then, there would likely be dark corners you'd never been to.
I want to give them just enough to know they don't know anything about the city.